Daniel's World of Coffee

Seattle Coffee Society, December 9th

Coming up, next Thursday night, location and exact time tbd, the inaugural meeting of the Seattle Coffee Society.

We did this in New York and it was a big hit. This is a club for coffee professionals and the most passionate amateurs. Anyone's welcome, but we're not going to dumb it down and explain the ABC's of cupping or anything like that. The Seattle Coffee Society is for those of you that already bleed SL-28.

A chance for baristas, roasters, green buyers, machine techs, cuppers, and other coffee professionals to get together, drink coffee, and talk about, and advance, the specialty coffee industry in Seattle.

Our first meeting will include a discussion about how particular countries become specialty coffee darlings (Rwanda, El Salvador) while others with seemingly similar conditions are almost completely absent (Uganda, Puerto Rico). I think people usually assume there are very good reasons for this. But the reasons are often, in fact, horrible reasons. We shall discuss. I hope to have several samples of interesting high-quality green coffee from my recent trip to Puerto Rico, working for the USDA on soil types. We'll brew some coffees, drink them, discuss, look at some videos, and have a brief presentation on the topic at hand.

We'll also talk about future meetings and set the agenda. Your input is very much welcome. Get in on the ground floor and be one of the leaders of the next wave of quality coffee in our beloved Seattle, the rightful King of Coffee Cities.

Email Daniel at [email protected] if you want to get involved. If you live in the Seattle area and work in coffee — or if you just love coffee — please spread the word to your facebook and twitter followers, your customers, and your cats and dogs.

I'll post the details of time and place as soon as I have them locked down, here on the blog. But it's Thursday, December 9th, in the early evening. So clear your calendar.

If you can't attend next Thursday evening but want to stay informed about future events, send an email to [email protected]

This Blog

Welcome Foodistas.

This blog isn't like most coffee blogs. I'm not a barista (though I was, once upon a time), and I'm not a hobbyist coffee enthusiast (though I am indeed enthusiastic about coffee). I'm a coffee educator and consultant, and I travel for development projects and teach classes in the USA and in coffee-producing countries. I don't work for any single roaster or coffee shop, so you get an unbiased expert opinion here... or at least the closest approximation I can manage, given my own personal preferences and friendships.

I also don't tend to post long musings on the meaning of customer service in the coffee industry in this postmodern world of ours, or other such navel-gazing nonsense. There's plenty of that out there, as I'm sure you've noticed. I like to keep my posts centered around my work, and my work centered around interesting stuff like week-long marathon tasting sessions, or trips to Africa. Of course, I also reserve the right to get philosophical, and therefore hypocritical, at any moment. It's my blog.

I was on the road for a development project when I got a notice from Foodista that I'd be featured on their homepage. So there won't be any new videos or anything till later this week... I'm busy working on my latest project in Puerto Rico. But if you stay tuned, I promise you pictures of deep purple colored dirt in a plastic baggy... trust me, it has something very interesting to do with coffee.

If you are new here, there's plenty to check out. I recommend the recent series on Panama... you can find the links in the side bar, "A new kind of hotness," "Getting high in Panama," and "Finca Sofia". Feel free to leave comments, and anyone who really loves coffee, professional, amateur, or aspiring know-it-all, is always free to email me at daniel at dot com coffeescholars, mutatis mutandis. I'll be back in the States with more material on Wednesday or so.

Cheers!

Isla del Encanto

Hello from Puerto Rico. This is just the way this blog goes sometimes. I go on trips for my work in the coffee industry, and while I'm gone, I have trouble posting. Sometimes there's no internet, sometimes I'm up in the mountains somewhere, sometimes I'm just having too much fun to hole up indoors and work on my computer. Then I get home from a trip, camera fat with pictures and video, and I have lots to say, and the posts come at a faster clip.

Right now I'm in Puerto Rico for a research project investigating the effect of different soil types on coffee plants and coffee flavors. Did you know that Puerto Rico has almost every type of soil in the world represented somewhere on the island? I did not know that before recently. But it does, and this project is going to take advantage of that little fact nicely.

It sounds a little funny to call Puerto Rico "undiscovered," because as far as tropical locales go, this island is as un-exotic as they come, at least for United Statesians. But as far as specialty coffee is concerned, it is indeed undiscovered; it might as well not even exist Puerto Rico has some very, very nice coffees, but you would never know that from inside the insular world of specialty coffee in North America.

Why is that? Why can you find an El Salvador coffee in every single hoity-toity super-specialty tattoo-bedecked-barista-having coffee shop in western Brooklyn, but you can't find a single Puerto Rican coffee? Is this because the coffee in El Salvador is categorically superior to that of Puerto Rico. No, it is because of a whole host of other factors, having to do with development, history, economics, and well shoot...

It's 85 degrees outside, it's Friday afternoon, the sun is starting to go down, I'm two blocks from the beach, and I'm ready for a little relaxation after a week of tramping around the research station and driving the curvy roads in the mountains. Suffice it to say, I've had an extremely interesting time, and I'll have lots more to share when I get back, on the blog, in person in Seattle, and perhaps in New York City, too, the Dear willing.

In the meantimes, enjoy your coffee, wherever you might be.